


The Air Between Parts

by waltzmatildah



Category: Dawson's Creek
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introspection, an informal reunion, and an engagement ring. <i> With the hand-written envelope, postmark: three thousand miles west of here, the self-loathing had returned.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Air Between Parts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faithful4you](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithful4you/gifts).



He’s never been a particularly confident flyer. Give him the endless,  
open ocean,  
and ten-foot waves that threaten capsize at any moment, over  
jumbo jets  
_bouncing_  
through storm clouds. 

Buoyancy he understands, for the most part. Flight makes  
literally  
no sense  
whatsoever. 

 

 

He’d known the invitation was coming, but the reality of the envelope appearing alongside Sears advertisements and take out pizza menus and an incorrectly delivered postcard intended for someone that isn’t either of them had been a whole different level of equilibrium-shifting.

A gathering to mark ten years post their Capeside High School graduation. 

It’s not the official reunion, of course. There’s an invitation for that, somewhere, too. Tossed into a drawer to be forcibly forgotten about. One for him, and one for her, separate squares of stiff card, separate, formal _‘and partner’_ s in cursive italic, crab-crawling into the silver border slightly, as though the universe is _still_ refusing to acknowledge that they made it out alive, and mostly intact. 

Together.

 

 

It’s easy enough to blame the gravity defying  
_thirty seven thousand foot_  
drop  
beneath them  
for the half-serious consideration he gives to the building notion he’s currently mid-coronary.

His back teeth chatter, marching band intense, and the shooting pain in his left arm is a  
_ghost_  
he’s not so much as Google-stalked for years.

 

 

With the hand-written envelope, postmark: three thousand miles west of here, the self-loathing had returned. Or maybe had never really gone away. An all-too-familiar acid burning in the pit of his stomach that had turned him equal parts monstrous and morose. Had convinced him he’s destined to be little more than the same teenage version of himself he’s never managed to banish. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, over and over and over…

He’d tried excuses in the beginning: urgent work commitments and unavoidable family gatherings. Financial limitations he’d manufactured with the thin threads of his own fraying desperation. But as much as he’d gone through the motions of moving his lips, sounding out the words, syllable by carefully crafted syllable, he’d known he was losing the battle.

For there is always a battle when it comes to this.

To them.

And history says he _almost_ always loses.

 

 

She’s asleep.  
Or pretending to sleep.  
Or wide-awake with her head on his shoulder.

As predictable to him now as she was  
_then_.  
Which is to say –  
not at all.  
Not really.  
At least, not with any degree of confidence. 

He runs the pads of his fingertips over the silk of her skin. Indelible ink that spells out his secrets; leaves them as lost in her as they are  
inside  
of  
him.

 

 

_It’ll be good to see everyone_ , she’d said with a nod and a wide grin; excited already. It’d been a casual statement of fact designed to start and end the decision making process. And he’d agreed, at least at first, at least out loud, because yeah, it probably would be. Good. Maybe. But then, the closer it got, and the more immediate the whole thing started to feel, the heavier his bones became.

She’d booked flights. She’d rented a car. She’d organised for their mail to be collected and for a largely neglected, entirely revolting, cilantro on their windowsill to be watered every other day. She’d packed and re-packed and then packed again, and he’d stood watching, using his fingers ‘round the door frame to keep him upright as he’d rattled silently through reasons for why she’d care so much.

Still.

_Not this again_ , his heartbeat had sung. _Not again, not again, not again, not again._

 

 

The flight attendant trundles her half-empty cart past his elbow. And he can no longer feel his feet.

He almost  
_wants_  
to have a panic attack.  
Would relish the familiar  
_physicality_  
of it.  
Because something, anything, everything would be better than the _nothing_ he’s currently folded into. 

It’s prom night and it’s ‘True Love’ and it’s a thousand other calamitous failures taken up residence in the  
hollow  
of him.

 

 

They’d fought. Not about the trip, that would be far too obvious. But about everything else, they’d fought. And it felt like their inevitable unraveling: arrived.

He couldn’t even bring himself to be surprised.

But then they’d fallen into bed at the end of the week. Had pressed tentative palms against backs and shoulders and the bony jut of a hip. She’d smiled, slow, and he’d blinked, and blinked, and blinked, and then he’d kissed her, hungry and sad and scared and instead of the good-bye he’d been expecting, it’d been hello, and I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean it. It’d been I love you, and I think you love me too, and a thousand other three a.m. conversations they could never quite manage to shape into words.

 

 

There’s an engagement ring burning a hole in his  
_soul_.  
If he squints, if he looks loosely at her hand,  
if…  
if he…  
…  
he can almost see it there.

 

 

It’d been dark. Late at night and with the inky sky lit only by fireflies and citronella candles. By cell-phone screens and a silver sliver of ethereal moon. Someone had been strumming a guitar, slow and low, the vibration moving through the bench seat beneath him, lulling him towards an ever-elusive oblivion; sleep. Bessie had motioned for him to follow her inside. Had pressed the vintage velvet box into the palm of his hand without explanation. Had smiled and shrugged and raised her eyebrows like she knew. 

Like she’d always known.

He waited three days before he cracked open the lid. 

He’d made deals with himself after that. If there’s a storm tonight, I’ll… If she’s home before midnight and she’s not too tired, I’ll… If the second lamplight on the right flickers twice…

I’ll…

 

 

The plane dips a wing to left. A sea of lights  
stretching out  
beneath them. The luminescent arteries of a city.

Fingers push their way into his then,  
insistent,  
sure.  
Like they might just belong there.

He runs his thumb around the base of hers as the turn  
levels out,  
and his heartbeat  
slows  
to something south of _imminently fatal_.

 

 

In the month that followed, there had been too many deals, made and not met. Or met, easily, but not upheld. And the longer he’d systematically put it off the more infinitely impossible the feat became. A larger than life phenomenon he could never hope to deserve.

That the Earth could continue to rotate, oblivious: a baffling proposition.

_You’re not in high school anymore,_ Bessie had said on a sigh, her exasperation tangible when he’d tripped over denials that he’d so much as contemplated the possibility their paths were inextricably linked and would, could, _maybe_ , remain that way, forever.

He’d laughed at that, at the absurdity of her statement. And at the stark realisation her casual appraisal of the situation could be so stingingly accurate.

 

 

The landing gear descends with a mechanical whir. A  
metaphor.  
_Perhaps_.

As the ground solidifies beneath them, metal and rock and a sudden swell of _possibility_ , he counts in beats, two, three  
four.

And he’s not entirely sure if his numbers lead towards the inevitable  
_end_  
or  
back in time to  
the  
very  
_beginning_.


End file.
